iTunes 7 At A Glance

I updated my iTunes without any hesitation following this morning's announcement, which only took a few minutes.

As soon as you open it, you can see how much the iTunes Store has grown in the past year. It currently seems a little cluttered with devoted sections to movies, TV episodes, music videos, songs, albums, podcasts and audiobooks. A "Just For You" Beta section is right in the middle of the page ready to suggest media that you might like, based on your past selections.

Movies and video games are the latest addition to the new iTunes Store, as well as a cover flow browser, automatic album art downloads, parental controls, video controls, a new user interface, and the iPod Summary. 

I plugged in my first generation iPod nano, and it opened up a new section I've never seen before summarizing everything in my iPod's memory. There were six tabs in this section: Summary, Music, Podcasts, Photos, Contacts and Nike + iPod (only available if you actually have one).  Located at the bottom of the Summary tab was a capacity bar that breaks down the content of your iPod by audio, photos, video, free space or other telling you exactly how much space is devoted to a particular file format. The other tabs display settings you've seen before.

Cover browser is a new view option that displays the album art in a fancy Web 2.0 like format. You can basically flip through your album collection by using a slider bar at the bottom of the window. As you slide the bar, the album covers quickly rotate as if they were inside a jukebox. If you don't automatically see this feature, just change your view to "cover browser" located on the top right corner. It works for any category on your iTunes lists. It's actually a very hypnotizing feature, and by that I mean FUN.

iPod Games are ready for download from your iTunes Store, but unfortunately, the games are only compatible with fifth generation iPods. No video iPod, no games for you. They can't be played in iTunes either. The whole package includes nine games for $44.91, or you can purchase them individually for $4.99.

The movie section uses the cover flow feature to look through movies, although, the movie selection was a bit weak. That's something we can expect for now, until Apple adds more titles to the 75 movie library currently available. Also, keep in mind that it will take approximately 30 mintues for movies to download, although you can watch them as they complete the task.

When I downloaded iTunes 7, it asked me if I wanted it to fetch album work. This is a new iTunes feature you'll appreciate when browsing through your albums on the cover browser viewer. I'm glad Apple included the Library Backup feature as well so anyone can easily back up their entire iTunes collection on a CD or DVD in one easy step.

Parents will be happy to know they can also filter out content using the new rating system with parental controls that allow them to restrict movies, and TV shows to PG-13 titles. They can also prevent any unauthorized changes to these settings by using their password.

Overall, the new iTunes is a lot more streamlined, simple to use, and the new cover flow addition is very hip.

Those who have downloaded it, what are your thoughts on the iTunes makeover? Has anyone had any problems?